Friday, September 7, 2012

Apologies Not Included / Angela S. Choi

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Author:

A lawyer
turned novelist, Angela Choi lives in San Francisco. She has one other novel
available, Hello Kitty Must Die. For
more, visit her website.

Description:

“Eighteen-year-old
Abigail Lin is smart, talented, and utterly miserable. Her everyday life is
scarred by a crippling and secret compulsion. But Abigail is not alone in her
unhappiness among the best and brightest. Her classmates Sophia Santos and
David Wendler have demons of their own. Sophia is lost halfway between
wakefulness and sleep, while David wrestles with a food addiction and a lethal
erotic obsession.

Except the
handsome, privileged, and successful Ethan Lambert seems to have it all — until
his behavior takes a bizarre and disturbing turn. Disillusioned and
disappointed, these four students are drawn together just as their lives are
about to spiral out of control. Will their friendship be enough to guide them
through the turbulence of their college years? Or will they succumb to the
pressures and neuroses that threaten their sanity and their very lives?”

Appraisal:

The
coming-of-age story can work in almost any genre, since a story, if it is to be
interesting to the reader, has to have conflict or challenges, and the
coming-of-age story is all about overcoming and learning from difficulties
while transitioning to the next level of maturity. Set in college, which is a
natural location and time of life for this story type, I found Apologies Not Included a fun and
entertaining read. The four main characters, two of whom drive the story lines
that justify calling this a thriller or suspense novel, are vastly different in
background and attitudes. Each has qualities both sympathetic and not, with the
protagonist, Abigail, having plenty of chances to watch, experience, and learn.
If you like coming-of-age stories, this is a good one.

One minor
nit I had was that the college in the story had some qualities, including
location, that led me to believe I know what school it was. To be fair, there
are multiple colleges and universities in New Haven, CT. Maybe my guess is
wrong. But the author avoids giving the school a name, referring to it as “the
college” or other generic terms. Avoiding giving the name of the university she
was thinking of (going so far as to not name it in her bio while mentioning she
went to college in the same town) seemed silly and contrived.

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